For the most part, players with ties to local basketball programs fared well last Thursday, as the Philly NCAA women’s league resumed its schedule after the Fourth of July interlude.

Defending champ Kelly Green, which lost one early-season contest but has not dropped another game, had Mount St. Joe alumna Sarah McGorry rebounding well and contributing four points in a 76-64 victory over Royal Blue. The Royal squad has a number of players who are teammates at Division II power Holy Family University, and that familiarity helped them step out to a 17-11 over Kelly Green, whose affiliations are more diverse.

A little more than midway through the first half the Kelly club caught up at 20-all, then they pulled ahead, with a McGorry lay-up giving them a 34-25 advantage with five minutes to go in the period. The halftime count was 46-32, but the Royals rallied in the second half and closed to within four points (55-51) with 11 minutes to go.

This gave Kelly Green a jolt and over the next three minutes they sent the lead back into double digits at 63-53, going on to win by a dozen. Former Girls Inter-Ac star Katie Kuester (Notre Dame) finished with 18 points but the game high of 24 belonged to her colleague Kelly Peterson, a future teammate of Mount St. Joe’s Mary Jo Horgan at Lehigh University.

On the same court, Horgan appeared in one of the late games last Thursday, winding up with 11 points as her Cardinal Red team turned a 46-28 halftime lead into a 78-52 win over Lime Green. The Cardinal collected a dozen points from 2010 Chestnut Hill College grad Chant’al Hardy, while the Lime legion (made up of Philadelphia University athletes) was paced by Kristen Blye (12 points) and Taylor Peltzer (11).

On the adjacent court the White team used a halftime buzzer-beater to tie the Teal entourage, 22-22, then White went on to pull out an 85-77 victory.

Germantown Academy grad and current Villanova player Jesse Carey had only scored one point for the White women in the last contest before the July 4 break, but she brought back some fireworks from the holiday and went off for 24 points in Thursday’s game. The Teal had to foul to stop the clock towards the end of the game, and Carey canned the final four points of the contest from the free throw line.

Another GA alum, Kris Guynn, normally plays for Teal but was not on hand, although her sister Nikki (Penn Charter ’10) was present to play for the Purple team in the third game in the late time slot. She scored six points, and former GA forward Cathy Hebling Peduzzi produced nine points for the Purple platoon, but they had no subs for the contest and were worn down by the Gold, 84-61. Chestnut Hill College junior Lindsay Alexander tossed in four free throws for the winners.